Hate and Love
by alanwolfmoon
Summary: Wilson comes to House's apartment after being attacked. Warning: Seriously beaten-up Wilson, hate crime, sexuality crisis.


House blinked, as he heard a familiar knock on his front door…but fainter than usual.

He called for Wilson to let himself in, but the door didn't open.

"Dammit, I'm a cripple here," said House, heaving himself to his feet and limping to the door, "have a little sympathy…"

He pulled the door open, and literally had to take a step back.

Wilson was there, bloodied, shivering, soaking wet, and crying.

House shook his head, stepping forward and pulling his friend inside with an arm around the younger doctor's shoulders, their no-touching taboo be damned.

Wilson almost clung to him, breathing in shallow, sobbing, hiccupping gasps.

House led him into the bathroom, sat him on the toilet, and pulled the shower chair out of the bathtub, so he could sit down while he assessed his friend's injuries.

Wilson had a long cut above his eyebrow, which seemed to be responsible for most of the blood on his face. There was a bruise blossoming along his jaw on the side opposite the cut. He was hugging his left wrist in close to his body, and holding his side with his right hand.

House looked Wilson over, decided there was no way he could get Wilson's jacket off the younger doctor without hurting him, and got a pair of scissors.

By the time Wilson was shirtless, House knew exactly what had happened.

At least, how Wilson had gotten hurt. Bruises the shape of fists—different sizes of fists—made it clear his friend had been jumped and beaten by more than one person, at least three, judging by the variety of bruise diameters.

Wilson is still crying and shivering, so House helps him undo his pants, and then gets him a warm, fluffy towel, and a pair of thick sweatpants.

Wilson manages to dry himself off with House's help, and get into the sweatpants.

It's at that point that he looses it, any semblance of self-control he'd managed to maintain throughout House's examination and help was gone.

He dissolves into inconsolable sobs, and House doesn't know what to do.

He really has no idea—he's never seen anyone over the age of ten act like this, much less Wilson. And, unlike the under-ten-year-olds, he doesn't think Wilson will be distracted by a lolly-pop enough to stop crying.

The last time he can remember anyone over the age of ten acting like this, it had been him, House himself, when he was fifteen. His mom had held him close, even though he was a head taller than her at the time, and hadn't really fit in her lap anymore.

House sits on the stool, and awkwardly reaches forward, resting one hand on the back of his friend's head, the other on his friend's back.

He's pretty sure he's doing it wrong, because Wilson just starts crying harder, so he pulls his hands away, quickly, before he can embarrass them both more than this situation already has.

But Wilson grips House's wrist with his good hand, meets House's eyes with liquid brown eyes overfilling with tears, and House hesitates, then, slowly, moves his arms to embrace his friend once more.

Wilson clings to him, and sobs into his shoulder, until he runs out of tears.

House scoots his chair a bit closer, and gently adjusts the towel around Wilson's shoulders, so it won't slip off.

Wilson keeps sniffing and hiccupping into House's shirt, and House doesn't push him away, until he seems to go a bit limp against the older doctor's chest.

"Wilson?"

No response.

House sighed, gently easing his friend away, and leaning him back against the tank of the toilet.

Wilson is asleep, worn out completely.

House awkwardly eases him off the toilet, onto the bathroom floor. It's the best he can do until his friend can move himself, and he puts a balled-up towel under his friend's wet head, as he starts to clean Wilson up.

The cut is long, deep, and still bleeding sluggishly.

House has blood on his shirt, now.

Wilson's lip is split, and his face is covered in dry and drying blood from the cut.

House carefully wipes the blood away, mostly to make sure there aren't any more cuts underneath.

Wilson's wrist is probably broken, given the swelling that's already there, but that can wait, since nothing feels displaced.

Wilson's ribs are probably bruised, but they aren't broken, and House doesn't think he's got any internal injuries—which is remarkable, given the beating he's so obviously taken.

House seriously doubts whoever did this knew what they were doing. One well-placed punch or knee to the gut, and Wilson would have been on the ground, and any valuables would have been easy pickings. Would have been a lot less trouble than the dozens of blows they landed on Wilson.

Frowning, House remembers something, and checks Wilson's pants pocket. Wallet, keys, credit card, cellphone. Everything's still there.

Not a mugging, then.

House carefully checks his friend's pupils, and they respond fine. Wilson didn't seem concussed, but he was so incoherent, House can't say whether he is or isn't, definitively.

He's clearly exhausted, now, but he moves and moans quietly, when House sprinkles cold water on his face.

Wilson was limping when he came in, and House pulls the pants down to check his friend's legs.

His shins are bruised up, but there's a heavy contusion to the outside of his left thigh, which is probably the cause of the limp.

House pulls his friend's pants back up, and cleans the cut one more time, seeing if it needs stitches, or just a few butterfly Band-Aids.

House goes with the Band-Aids for now, since he's not entirely sure, and it causes Wilson a lot less pain than stitches would have.

He covers that with gauze, and tapes it down.

Wilson is starting to stir, now, and House knows he doesn't have much more time, before his friend is awake, and fending off his attempts to ascertain the nature of the attack.

House checks his friend's head for more bumps—there are a few, but they aren't very big—back for contusions, and then hands and arms.

It's clear Wilson fought back, his knuckles are split, and a few are swollen—check those for fractures, later.

His forearms are bruised, like he was blocking blows with them, and his fingernails have blood and what might be some skin and a bit of hair under them.

House gets a Ziploc bag and scrapes the blood and stuff out from under them, into it, since he knows his friend's nature, and the first thing he's gonna want to do when he wakes up is take a bath. If Wilson wants to press charges, the DNA from under his fingernails will be a big help…at least, House figures it'd be better in a plastic baggy than down the drain. Maybe he's been watching too much Law and Order.

As he finishes, and closes the bag, he notices something, on the back of Wilson's hand.

Wilson is moaning a bit, eyelids fluttering, so House grabs a towel, quickly wiping the blood off so he can get a good look at whatever it is.

It's a club stamp, and it makes House's blood run cold. Because he's pretty sure the fact that Wilson having a stamp from a gay nightclub on his hand, and Wilson getting beaten up in something other than a mugging are connected.

Wilson finally opens his eyes, and the first thing he sees is House's face, which looks stricken.

He realizes that his hand is held in both of House's, and that the blood is cleared away over the purple ink.

He drops his eyes, and starts to cry again.

But House doesn't do what he expects.

Instead, he gently squeezes Wilson's hand with both of his own, and then presses a damp washcloth into it.

"You probably wanna wash up, am I right?"

Wilson looks at him, sniffing, and closes his eyes and nods.

House starts the bath running, and Wilson takes off the sweatpants, and climbs into it, legs trembling and barely supporting him.

House sits with him through the whole thing, perched on the toilet, glancing at him occasionally to check that he's okay, but otherwise giving him his privacy.

By the time Wilson is finished scrubbing at himself, his skin is raw and pink, and the water is a dull red-brown from dirt and blood.

House makes him stop scrubbing before he hurts himself.

"You're not saying anything," said Wilson, quietly, as he stumbled towards the couch, feeling clean, if not happy.

"What's there to say? I'm sorry you got beat up. There, happy?"

Wilson blinked, as House gripped his shoulders, steering him towards the bedroom instead of the couch.

"That's not…"

House sits him on the bed, and hands him an extra-large pajama t-shirt—Wilson recognizes it as House's favorite.

Wilson holds the shirt in his hands, wrist throbbing mercilessly, in time with the pain in the rest of his body, and looks at his friend.

"House…"

House folds his arms over his chest, and stands, unsure what to say, because he's pretty sure that calling Wilson an idiot isn't going to help.

"What? What's there to say, Wilson? You were at a nightclub trying to pick up guys. You got beat up 'cause you were trying to pick up guys. What do you want me to say?"

Wilson swallowed, then said, quietly, voice small and almost scared, "you could say you don't hate me…"

House blinked, slowly.

What?

"What?"

"Please…" Wilson looked up him, brown eyes as wide and big and liquid and pitiful as they got, "just…"

His lower lip was starting to tremble, "please just tell me that."

House unfolded his arms, leaned down, gripped his friend's shoulders, and rested his forehead against Wilson's, speaking slowly and evenly, "Wilson, you are an idiot. You are going to lie down, and not pass out, and not hurt yourself. You are going to hold icepacks where I tell you to, and let me get you x-rays and stitches if I think you need them. Because you scared the shit out of me tonight, Wilson."

Wilson swallowed, audibly, "so… you don't…"

"God, no, Wilson. God no. Now lie down before you pass out."

Wilson nodded, slowly, as House straightened.

He shuffled under the covers, and House wrapped an icepack around his swollen wrist, and sat on the edge of the bed, holding another pack to his jaw.

Wilson closed his eyes, and started to talk, quietly, almost whispering, "I didn't know. Three wives, two affairs, eight serious girlfriends I never married… maybe all that should have been my first clue. It wasn't, though. It… tonight was the first night I ever did anything. Great luck on my part, huh? I asked a patient where you're supposed to go for that kind of thing, how you can tell for sure. A *patient*. This is great. Just great. Just typically great."

He was starting to cry, again, a little.

House sighed, "Wilson, shut up. Now I know why you're always telling me to stop the self pity, it's really annoying to listen to."

Wilson opened his eyes, met House's blue ones, then looked away.

House took the icepack off, briefly, to check the swelling, then checked Wilson's wrist.

"Get some rest, Wilson. I'm gonna sleep on the other half of the bed, 'cause I don't think either of us can handle sleeping on the couch all night."

Wilson nodded, miserably.

"Goodnight, Wilson," said House, turning off the light, "we can talk in the morning, but right now, you need to get some rest."

Wilson closed his eyes, as he felt House crawl into bed beside him.

"House?"

"Sleep."

"You're not…awkward… about this?"

"About finding out my best friend that's seen me naked dozens of times turned out to be gay and then sleeping in the same bed as him half an hour after finding out? No, not awkward at all."

"I'm sorry. I should sleep on the couch."

"Not if you want to be able to move tomorrow. Just go to sleep, already. We can talk in the morning."

"…okay."

"That's better."

Wilson smiled, a small twitch of smile, to himself in the dark.

At least House didn't hate him.

At least he had that.

* * *

By the time the next morning came, Wilson was unbelievably sore, and House was acting completely inappropriate.

Neither, regrettably, were much of a surprise.

House's quiet and understanding, if impatient, mood from the night before was gone, and he was treating the whole thing like the funniest thing that had ever happened.

Okay, not the whole thing. He seemed genuinely upset that Wilson was hurt and had been attacked. But he was being an utter asshole about Wilson possibly maybe being gay—and not knowing for sure. More of an utter asshole than usual.

Wilson finally yelled at him to leave him alone, after sitting through hours of badly done feminine accents and completely ridiculous limp-wristed gestures.

House blinked at him for a moment, then plopped down on the couch next to him.

Wilson winced, as the jolt made every one of his injures hurt with a renewed vigor, but sighed with relief when House's next remark was in a normal voice and plain intonation, "so you gonna call the police?"

Wilson shook his head, miserably, "I didn't get a look at their faces. There was nobody else around. There's no way they can find them."

House rolled his eyes, "you scratched them."

Wilson blinked at his friend, "then took a bath."

"After I scraped the blood, hair and skin from under your fingernails into a plastic baggy."

Wilson stared, "you watch way too much TV, House."

House shrugged.

Wilson sighed, and looked away, "they were just kids, maybe twenty years old, the oldest of them… I don't think DNA would help."

"You should still—"

"No, House," said Wilson, firmly.

House stopped, and tilted his head, "why?"

"Why what?"

"Why don't you want to report it? Because you don't think it'll do any good? Or because you don't want to tell the police why it happened."

Wilson closed his eyes, cursing for the thousandth time, having a friend as intelligent as House.

"Both," he admitted, quietly.

House sighed, heavily.

"You're probably right, about the first part. But you should still report it, just so it goes in the crime statistics. Report it, give them the crap from under your fingernails, and tell them you wanna remain anonymous. One of the kids that did it commits another crime, get's caught, they match the DNA, and he gets punished for both crimes, not just one."

Wilson nodded, miserably, "you have a disturbingly thorough knowledge of the criminal justice system."

"You have a disturbingly thorough knowledge of Forty-Second Street."

Wilson snorted, and rolled his eyes.

But…really. House was joking and poking fun at him.

House wouldn't do that if he had a problem with what was going on, what Wilson was slowly starting to figure out.

"So… you really don't have a problem…?"

"Wilson, if I had had a problem with having a best friend who was possibly gay, I would not have had a best friend that could not stay involved with a woman for three years."

"Julie and I were together for three years."

"If you're counting the two months you spent sleeping on my couch, then, yes, three years and four days."

"You…counted…how many *days* I was involved with her?" asked Wilson, incredulously.

"Yes."

"…I'm not sure if I should be flattered or annoyed."

"Go with annoyed. Flattered would just be weird."

Wilson sighed, closing his eyes. He knew this would happen. He hadn't told House that he was maybe not completely as heterosexual as he might have thought, less out of fear that House would hate him for it, but that it would make House question the more intimate parts of their friendship.

He had been scared it would ruin the only long-term relationship he really had left, by making House think that maybe their friendship wasn't what he'd thought.

Wilson was pulled out of his reverie by House, who had, completely unexpectedly, taken Wilson's hand.

"Stop it," said House, quietly, "I'm poking fun because I thought that would make you more comfortable—business as usual, all that. This is freaking me out, Wilson, but not for the reasons you think. I don't mind thinking that you might have feelings beyond just plain friendship, because I don't have any problems going beyond just plain friendship. I'm not gonna question every touch, every time you ever sat with me while I took a bath during the infarction, 'cause I know it wasn't just friendship. And I'm fine with that. I don't have any interest in sticking my penis up your butt, but I don't have a problem with something beyond friendship."

"…why is it freaking you out, then?"

"Because you aren't sure if you're okay with something beyond friendship. Because *you* are questioning every time we shared a bed at a conference."

Wilson stared at his friend for a long moment.

Then, slowly, scooted over, wincing several times as he moved, and rested against the older doctor's side.

House smirked a bit, and let Wilson lean, gently tracing the cut above his friend's eyebrow.

"Why didn't you tell me?" asked Wilson, quietly.

"Tell you what?"

"That's you're gay…or bi, or whatever…"

"Because I'm not. Not as a general rule, anyway. I've had a thing for a few men, Crandall, for one, but I don't usually have any real interest in having sex with them, and I tend to like women a lot more, and certainly more consistently. But there are a few guys I've had things for, yeah. Including you. I just never felt it was worth mentioning."

Wilson closed his eyes, resting his head against his friend's shoulder.

"House?"

"What?"

"I think I wanna call the police."

House smirked a bit, and nodded, reaching for the phone.


End file.
